Evidence of Sir Richard Hotham before the Committee of Inquiry.
The effect of his evidence.
Among the witnesses who appeared before the
committee, there was no one more intelligent than
Sir Richard Hotham, an eminent shipowner, who
declared that the existing mode of freighting ships
by the Company was absurd, and that their charter-party
was one of the most useless for the purpose
that could possibly be conceived. Analysing the
whole system, and the clumsy and expensive mode
in which they conducted their business, he gave the
following particulars of what they actually paid for
carriage on every ton of produce imported from the
East:—
£ s. d.
80 tons of kentledge, at the fixed
rate of 9l. 13s. 4d. per ton 773 6 4
11 tons of China ware, at the chartered
rate of 29l. per ton 319 0 0
393 tons of tea and silk, at the chartered
rate of 32l. per ton 12,576 0 0
15 tons, private trade, at the chartered
rate of 32l. per ton 480 0 0
—- -
499 14,148 6 4
Or equal to 32l. 10s. per ton, after the freight on kentledge had been deducted; and he showed how a saving could be effected in the cost of freightage on the vessels employed, from China alone, of upwards of 43,000l. annually.[1] Sir Richard offered to bring goods from any part of the East at twenty guineas per ton, and this offer, combined with other important facts which had been adduced*
- ↑ At a later period no less than 50l. per ton freight was on more than one occasion paid for the voyage, beyond an allowance for contingencies. From Hardy's 'Registry,' pp. 18, 20, and 22, at a court of Directors held on the 23rd September, 1796, the ship Admiral Gardner, of eight hundred and thirteen tons, commanded by "John
